


no matter your luck, your charms

by sandyk



Series: season 3 tried to be canon post eps [3]
Category: Superstore (TV)
Genre: Gen, Post ep 3x03, mention of someone planning a sexual assault
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-15
Updated: 2017-10-15
Packaged: 2019-01-17 22:49:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12375759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sandyk/pseuds/sandyk
Summary: Jonah's totally cool, just like Garrett, and he slept like a baby, if you were wondering.





	no matter your luck, your charms

**Author's Note:**

> Not mine, no profit garnered. Title from Catie Curtis's Hush.

Jonah slept like a baby; colicky, rarely sleeping longer than a few hours at a time, waking up fitful and unhappy. One of his girlfriends in college had made that joke. Jonah's psychiatrist in college had not found it funny. It was 1 am and Jonah was suddenly awake. And thinking about Georgia Park, across from him in bed when he was 19, not exactly smiling as she made the joke. Whatever happened to Georgia Park, he thought. How had he not friended her on Facebook. He reached for his new phone (Thanks, Dad, he thought, like every time he used his phone) and looked her up.

Georgia Park was happily married to a woman and had a successful Korean restaurant in Des Moines, Iowa. He was going to leave a comment on her wall but there was no way that wouldn't be awkward - hey, remember that joke you made about how I sleep? Maybe she would think he was coming on to her. That would be creepy, like he was hitting on her now that she was married to a woman. He just sent a friends request. That was nice and lowkey.

He managed to fall back asleep. He woke up when his alarm went on off on his new phone (Thanks, Dad!) and immediately silenced it. Garrett wasn't working today and Jonah was a considerate roommate.

He was trying to make his coffee quietly but then Garrett said, "Hey, stop trying to be quiet. I'm up."

"Sorry," Jonah said.

Garrett was quiet for a minute or two. "Hey, you're going into work today, right?"

"Absolutely, right after breakfast," Jonah said.

"When someone asks you how I am, you're going to say?"

Jonah said, "Oh, he's great, cool as a cucumber --"

"No," Garrett said. "No, you will not. You will say I'm cool, no modifiers, no metaphors, no additions. Garrett's cool. Now repeat it."

Jonah said, "Garrett? He's cool."

"Say it again, but this time you're even-tempered, your tone is calm. No uptalk," Garrett said.

"Garrett's cool," Jonah said.

"Almost there, be more calm. You can take on anything. Nothing's wrong, nothing's exciting. Deadpan, calm," Garrett said.

"Garrett's cool," Jonah said. He definitely sounded cool.

"Good, good," Garrett said. "Now, Sandra comes up to you, she wants you to pass on some love to me. Do I need it?"

"No, Garrett's cool," Jonah said.

"Good, good. Now Dina's coming up to you, she wants to know if I'm upset after she dumped me, which she did not, and you say --"

Jonah thought. He was taking too long. He said, "Garrett's cool. If you're so worried, you can call him and ask him. If you're so concerned."

Garrett wheeled out with a smile. "Nice, that's perfect. Where you going for breakfast?"

"You want to come? I'm going with Amy to this place --"

"No, I am not interested in horning in on your completely platonic breakfast," Garrett said. "Is this a date?"

"No, not at all. We used to go out to eat all the time. Until she went into marriage counseling. I would pay, we would just talk and chat. Then we stopped. And now we're starting again. Just friends, hanging out, eating," Jonah said. "Hey, I found my college girlfriend on Facebook. She's married and her wife is really pretty."

"That was your subtle way of telling me she's married to a woman and you're totally okay with that, right? Good for her," Garrett said, rolling his eyes.

"Yes," Jonah said. "She accepted my friend request."

"You're having a banner day already," Garrett said. He wheeled back into his room.

Jonah drove to the place Amy had picked. As always, it was a slightly pricey cafe, since Jonah was paying. He didn't mind. She was already seated inside, coffee in front of her. He sat down and said, "Good morning." Calm, no modifiers. Cool. 

"Good morning," Amy said. She looked irritated. The waitress came and they both ordered. Then they were silent again. The waitress came and gave them their food. 

"This is nice, this is nice," Jonah said. "I talked to Dina last night before I left, and I was saying to her, 'hey, mental health is important and it shouldn't be stigmatized --'"

"You said that to me, too. You feel strongly about it, huh?" Amy added hot sauce to her eggs.

"I do, and I was saying how mental illness is just illness and you wouldn't tell someone with a broken leg to just ditch the crutch, and Dina said, of course she would do that. Then she said she should have been training her brain better, like intervals or something for a few years before this. Then she'd be fine," Jonah said.

Amy smiled. "That sounds exactly like Dina. Exactly like her. I'm not even surprised. So how's Garrett taking the break up?"

"He's cool. He had Randy over," Jonah said, without any rancor at all. None. "I think his advice was inadequate."

"Of course it was," Amy said. "I drove Emma to school this morning and I asked her, hey, how is your dad affording these concert tickets? And you know how? Not a job, it's his stupid brother."

"When is she coming back to work?"

"Thursday, she's only working two days a week," Amy said. "You should yell at Garrett, that's real friendship."

"Why would I yell at Garrett? We get along great," Jonah said.

Amy shrugged. "Maybe you'd sleep better?"

"I sleep fine," Jonah lied.

"Oh, God, you know what's totally disturbing? Carol's telling people she plans to sneak into Jerry's hospital room and have sex with him while he's in coma and get pregnant that way," Amy said. She gulped down her coffee.

"That would not be sex, that would be sexual assault," Jonah said. "That's illegal and wrong. She's telling everyone about how she's going to commit a crime. An immoral crime."

"What are moral crimes?"

"I just mean, planning sexual assault is way worse than having a couple of bags of weed," Jonah said. "Can't we fire her? Not us, I mean, Dina or Glenn."

"She'd have so much free time, though," Amy said.

"Speaking of firing people, maybe we could set her up with Marcus. He seems to have a loose definition of consent," Jonah said. "He offered to let me stay with him and we could lure women in, which sounded dicey. But Carol is way dicier."

"Also, she told people we had sex during the tornado," Amy said.

"Now I really want to yell," Jonah said. "Who has sex in 8 minutes? And our first time? In the diarrhea medication?" Jonah suspected he might be yelling. "She really should be fired."

"I know," Amy said. She gulped down more coffee. She smiled at him, her cautious smile. "I'm sorry, by the way. Which is why I asked you, I thought we could start meeting for meals again. I should have called you during the summer. And you lost your apartment. Which is bad. I should have been a better friend. But things were complicated. And awkward."

"Oh, it's okay," Jonah said. "Totally okay. It didn't bother me."

"You're not a great liar," Amy said.

"Sandra is a great liar," Jonah said.

"Okay," Amy said. "By the way, I assume you're paying."

"No problem," Jonah said. "We used to do this a lot."

"We did," Amy said. "My stupid marriage counselor thought it was a bad idea."

"You talked about me during marriage counseling?" Jonah looked at his nearly empty plate. That was news.

"Not you specifically," Amy said. "I just said sometimes I had more fun going out with my coworkers than with Adam. I think that guy was biased anyway. Not all counselors should have their job, you know."

"You said you learned things," Jonah said. He'd liked his shrinks. Each of them had taught him something important about himself. All four of them.

"I was trying to get Dina to open up," Amy said. "That marriage counselor was on Adam's side. Which, fine, maybe it was all my fault. But one time he called me fiery and talked about my temper. I think he was about to say spicy once or sassy."

"So you think he was racist?"

"Probably," Amy said. "Unconscious bias, whatever. He was not good at his job. Also, why do you like Churchill so much?"

"Well, I acknowledge his faults, speaking of racism. And eugenics and opposing women's suffrage. Also the way he talked about Gandhi. Really, a lot of racism. But he also did amazing things. I used to be really into World War II, the Blitz. Also I watched The Crown and I don't think John Lithgow did him justice." Jonah clammed up because he could sense he was about to annoy Amy.

"Well, that's interesting," Amy said. "Not at all."

"It was very helpful for debate," Jonah said. "Learning to speak well, be articulate. Inspiring."

"You seem less not anxious and more annoying than you were before." Amy signaled for more coffee. "I'm not saying this right. Before the tornado."

"Well, I thought I was in a good place, chill, but then the whole store fell apart and everything I owned was gone. I lived in a trailer and didn't even have a job and my mom was reading 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami and she texted me that all the time about it," Jonah said. "I think I was fine. I am fine."

"Okay," Amy said. "Sounds like we all had a rough summer."

"Well, as Winston Churchill did not say, if you're going through Hell, keep going."

Amy smiled. "He didn't say that?"

"He didn't, it's a misattribution. Not a word I get to say all the time so thank you," Jonah said. "Anyway, don't worry about me, I'm cool." No modifiers, deadpan, well done, he thought.


End file.
